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Unboxing IndieBox: Orlando’s Independent Video Game Subscription Box!

June 19, 2015

Subscription boxes are hugely popular right now. They’ve gone from being filled with just general pop culture merchandise to being focused to specific genres and themes. Hell, even Marvel has one now too. But when you have a lot of people trying to cash in on the same idea, you get companies who decide to do something different and really stand out. And that’s exactly IndieBox does.

Orlando-based IndieBox chooses one downloadable video game a month and builds a physical collector’s box around it. All the games they choose must be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. They need a rating on Steam of at least 75 or at least an 8.0 on IndieDB. All of their boxes have a DRM-free copy of the game, USB game cartridge, a soundtrack, and a color manual. But each box also has different items themed around the games like pins, stickers, and various physical goodies.

As somebody who still buys games physically, I love this idea. Even when you buy physical games, their boxes have nothing inside but the game disc. IndieBox captures the nostalgia of buying games in the 80s and 90s and understands the lost art of the video game manual. And I can only imagine how cool this is on the developer side whose game is only available in a downloadable form.

I got to stop by IndieBox in preparation for this article and they’re a small team, consisting of only five people on staff at the moment. The company started in a living room, quickly grew out of that, and after a little more than a year you can tell they’re outgrowing the shared office space where they’re currently set up. Their box for May, Dyscourse, is their 13th box at the time of writing this, they’ve hit 1,300 subscribers.

But how is such small company able to reach and fulfill orders for so many people? Over the weekend before their box ships, they open themselves up to the community and throw a Boxing Party. You get to come out to their offices and help them package and ship out their boxes. By coming out and helping, you’ll get a fed, paid, and a free box! If you keep up with them on Facebook, you can find out how to attend each month’s Boxing Party.

IndieBox also recently partnered with two successful Kickstarter campaigns. Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove (that I was a backer of) was funded back in March and IndieBox will be putting together their Kickstarter Exclusive Boxed Game Set. Steamroller Studies, also located here in Orlando, successfully completely the Kickstarter campaign for their new game, Deadwood: The Forgotten Curse, and IndieBox will be putting together the physical copy for the game as well. And their reach doesn’t stop there. In April they partnered with Humble Bundle and released a box dedicated to tabletop gaming.

I can’t say enough how much I love this service and what they’re doing for the indie gaming community. They’ve grown a lot in a year and I’m excited to see where they’ll be in another year. You can keep up with them on Facebook and Twitter and even watch them stream games on their Twitch channel. Oh, and if you’re at PAX Prime in August, stop by and say hi!